BT cable ballsup hooks up punters to wrong numbers

Several BT phone customers in Surrey ended up fielding calls from strangers after engineers screwed up while rewiring their cables.

Pauline and Thomas Rodgers started to receive phone calls for a bloke called Charlie after BT relaid cables in their local area. The repair work in Wanborough Hill, Surrey, took place after thieves stole hundreds of metres of BT's copper cables, taking down phone and internet connections in the area.

In another comical misconnected cable problem, an Aldershot resident reported trying to call her mother-in-law only to find herself connected to a fax machine.

BT's customer service came in for a slating from local news site Get Surrey, which reported that when affected customers tried to tell BT what was going on they were told to report the problem online - something many couldn't do because the internet was down. However engineers seem to have largely fixed the problem on Friday.

Some customers are concerned that with the mix-up they'll be liable for other people's phone bills. BT have told them to get in contact to resolve the issues.

A BT spokesman explained: “During complex repairs such as this there can be instances where individual lines can be connected incorrectly.

“We are working on a handful of residual faults caused by this cable theft.”